At Rope's End (A Dr. James Verraday Mystery #1)(46)
He took one of them out. It was black and white, Verraday’s favored photographic medium. In it, Nikki was lying on her belly atop a duvet on Verraday’s sleigh bed, grinning that seductive Cheshire-cat grin at him. One of her long legs was stretched out behind her on the bed. The other was chambered above her, a stiletto pump dangling seductively off the end of her toes. His memory had been correct. The outfit Nikki was wearing was virtually identical to the costume that Bettie Page was modeling in the last thumbnail photo. He supposed that he had seen that picture of Bettie years earlier, had forgotten it on a conscious level, yet unwittingly recreated it when he had bought the lingerie for Nikki that she was wearing in the photo that he now held in his hand.
Gazing at it now, he grudgingly understood how Kyle Davis had been so unable to resist Rachel Friesen. He had an impulse to toss this photo and all the other Nikki photos into the wastebasket but then felt a pang of regret and placed them back in his filing cabinet. He still had more in common with Kyle Davis than he cared to admit.
CHAPTER 22
As Verraday and Maclean walked through the Science Quadrangle past the Drumheller Fountain, he noticed that the first dead leaves of the season had fallen into the water. He watched them swirling about on the surface, some caught in eddies, moving together, others alone, traveling in erratic trajectories. He wondered whether, if you tracked it all long enough, a pattern would emerge, some master Newtonian clockwork, or if it was all just chaos, the random influences of a fickle universe.
“So we didn’t find anything interesting in Helen Dale’s apartment,” said Maclean. “Not yet at least. There were no signs of any struggle, no blood, no disturbance, not even a magazine out of place. And no cell phone or datebook.”
“Which is exactly what I’d expect from our killer,” said Verraday. “He won’t leave a trace of himself any place that he’s not able to control.”
A strand of Maclean’s long hair had come loose, and as they passed the fountain into the open area of the rotunda, a gust of wind caught it, carried it up for a moment, then draped it across the lapel of her short Burberry trench coat. He wondered if he should tell her. Then he decided against it. It wasn’t like having a low-flying zipper or spinach stuck between your teeth. He liked the way it looked. Seeing her now, with the wind playing through her hair, looking so natural, he imagined she would be in her element in the woods, taking her inner city kids on wilderness treks. She turned to him.
“What are you smiling at?”
“Oh, nothing,” said Verraday. “I hadn’t even realized I was smiling.”
Maclean followed as Verraday now turned down a walkway toward an attractive brick building with a Gothic arched window in the center.
“Here we are,” he said. “This is the Kirsten Wind Tunnel.”
“This isn’t how I pictured a wind tunnel,” said Maclean.
“That’s because it was built in the 1930s, when there was Guggenheim money and no one had yet come up with the bright idea of making campus buildings look like Soviet mental hospitals. After you.”
He held the door open for her.
Entering, they heard a low hum. They followed the sound a short distance down the hall until they spotted a white-haired man in his midsixties wearing a Hawaiian shirt and gazing intently through a heavy blast window. On the other side of the shatterproof glass, in the wind tunnel, two helmeted men on locked-down racing bikes were pedaling furiously.
“Professor Lowenstein?” called Verraday.
“That’s me,” replied the man, turning and smiling. He had long, thinning white hair, prominent features, and light-blue eyes that gazed out thoughtfully from behind a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, giving him the demeanor of an overgrown Hobbit.
“We spoke yesterday on the phone. I’m Professor Verraday, and this is Detective Maclean.”
“Right. Let me just have a quick word with these gentlemen.”
Professor Lowenstein pushed a large red button, and the whine and roar from within the tunnel subsided. He switched on a talk-back microphone.
“Take five, fellas,” he told the men riding the bicycles.
“I wasn’t expecting to see bicycles in a wind tunnel,” said Maclean.
“Well, we gotta pay our way here. They’re determining how to reduce drag on racing bike helmets. That’s our specialty here—figuring out how to get through life with the least amount of resistance. But I know you’re not here to talk about that.”
Verraday was already wishing he did have all afternoon to listen to Lowenstein. It would no doubt have been more pleasant than tracking a killer.
“As I said on the phone, Professor,” began Verraday, “I understand your hobby is local commercial aviation history. Detective Maclean is working on a criminal case that might have a related angle to it. Could be nothing, but you never know.”
“The case is ongoing and none of the details can be public yet,” added Maclean.
Lowenstein smiled. “For the last four decades, both the Russians and the Chinese have been trying to play footsie with me, hoping to persuade me to reveal the knowledge we’ve unlocked here. And in all that time, the only information they’ve gotten out of me is that it’s a bad idea to urinate into high-velocity air masses. So my lips are sealed. Now how can I help?”